That’s how many names are on a seating list for the funeral service of the late Park Avenue socialite and philanthropist Brookae Astor, to be held on Friday at 2:30 p.m. at St. Thomas Church, an Episcopal congregation on Fifth Avenue at 53rd Street. Mrs. Astor died on Monday at the age of 105.

The list, which was updated in the last few years, based on a working version that Mrs. Astor began more than a decade ago, comprises a certain Who’s Who of New York cultural and philanthropic society. It includes writers and artists, bankers and ambassadors, Rockefellers and royals. Also on the list are one former president and two former first ladies.

The names include Vartan Gregorian, who was president of the New York Public Library when Mrs. Astor adopted it as her main cause and is now president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York; Paul LeClerc, the current president of the library; musicians as diverse as Harry Belafonte and Renée Fleming; the former television news anchors Water Cronkite, Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather; Martha Stewart; James D. Wolfensohn, a former president of the World Bank; Linda Gillies, director of the Vincent Astor Foundation; and Randall Bourscheidt, president of the Alliance for the Arts.

Mrs. Astor’s son, Anthony D. Marshall, is in charge of organizing the service. The church’s verger, Max Henderson-Begg, said that it had not been determined whether the funeral would be open to the public.

The Rev. Andrew Mead, the rector of the church, said that Mrs. Astor “had been specifying things that she wanted for her service since before I got here, which was 11 years ago.” Mr. Mead added that the funeral service would include some of Mrs. Astor’s favorite hymns from the hymnal of the Episcopal Church.

The seating list includes designations for six male ushers, eight honorary pallbearers and three alternates — an usher, a pallbearer and the philanthropist Howard Phipps Jr., who could serve in a pinch at either position. Then follows a list of family members; 93 people with “V.I.P. seating” status; and finally 285 names under the heading “other possible guests.”

But with the service still two days away, some planning remained in flux. One person who had been briefed on the event’s planning said yesterday that the possibility remained that there would be no honorary pallbearers from among Mrs. Astor’s friends. Instead, those duties could be fulfilled by members of the United States Marine Corps. Kenneth E. Warner, Anthony Marshall’s lawyer, said those details would not be announced until Mr. Marshall had made a final decision.

Two of the pallbearers on the list, Annette de la Renta and David Rockefeller, were aligned against Mr. Marshall in the dispute last year over the care Mrs. Astor was receiving. In July 2006, one of Mr. Marshall’s sons, Philip Marshall, filed a court petition accusing his father of neglecting to care for Mrs. Astor while trying to enrich himself with her fortune. The petition was supported with affidavits from Mrs. De la Renta, Mr. Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger.

As befits a woman who outlived her generation and a healthy percentage of the generation below hers, the list has a slightly dated, or at least emeritus, cast to it. This is the class that presided over the city’s artistic and charitable institutions at a time when it was still likely, or at least less implausible, to find people invested in the notions of noblesse oblige and an American aristocracy.

The list is somewhat dated itself: At least a of few of those on it, including Kitty Carlisle Hart, have died.

Reached yesterday, the designer Kenneth Jay Lane said that he had not been notified about serving as an usher, though Mr. Marshall’s office had called earlier in the day to notify him about the funeral.

“I’ve been a friend of Mrs. Astor’s for 40 years at least,” Mr. Lane said. “I’m pleased to have been a part of Brooke’s group of close friends. Of course, I’ve been missing her for a long time. She’d been not out of my thoughts, but out of my life, for several years.”

Kent L. Barwick, who got to know Mrs. Astor as the president of the Municipal Art Society, described their relationship as one of “allies on a number of causes, from St. Bartholomew’s to Grand Central Terminal to setting up the Municipal Arts Society’s headquarters.”

He added, “She was approachable, and although as far as I could see, went out every night, she was always bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the morning.”

Photo

Annette de la Renta and Brooke Astor on their way to the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue in 1990.Credit
Bill Cunningham/The New York Times

Friends and working acquaintances described Mrs. Astor as an extremely positive person. “Brooke was a yes person,” said David T. Schiff, who succeeded Mr. Phipps as chairman of the Wildlife Conservation Society. “She always looked for a way to do something for you.”

John Richardson, the art historian, said that he had known Mrs. Astor since he arrived in America from England, in 1960. “She was the writer’s friend and champion,” he said. “Of course she was a writer herself,” he said. “She had a very good turn of phrase. And she had a very soft spot for other writers. She always came to my book parties.” He added, “I put her on my right. Of course I put her on my right.”

“That’s why I think her work at the library is so hugely important, and not just the main library, but the branches were important to her,” he said. “She loved being the benefactor of libraries.”

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He expressed some surprise at the thought of a list and said, “I haven’t received a card.”

The list also appears to not be an entirely direct reflection of Mrs. Astor’s life. At least a couple of people on it — Whoopi Goldberg and Ms. Stewart — are friends of Mr. Marshall but did not know Mrs. Astor well.

The compilation of names reflects the degree to which Mrs. Astor’s access to power was above the cut and thrust of politics and ideology. Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, the daughter of President John F. Kennedy, is listed, along with her husband, Edwin A. Schlossberg, and so is Casey Ribicoff, the widow of United States Senator Abraham A. Ribicoff of Connecticut. On the same pages are Nancy Reagan and former President George H. W. Bush and his wife, Barbara.

The service is expected to last a little over an hour in the French Gothic sanctuary where construction began when Mrs. Astor was 9, replacing a building that had burned in 1905. Back then, that stretch of Fifth Avenue was lined with the mansions and town houses of the rich. The Vanderbilts, among others, lived just up the block.

But on Friday, the mourners will take their places in a church that is 11 blocks from the library that Mrs. Astor loved, the New York Public Library, at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street.

To call Mrs. Astor’s death the end of an era is quite an understatement, Mr. Lane said. “There’s no longer a Mrs. Astor in New York for the first time in 150 years.”

Correction: August 24, 2007

An article on Aug. 15 about the names on the seating list for the funeral of Brooke Astor, the Park Avenue socialite and philanthropist, referred incorrectly to the hymns that Mrs. Astor wanted sung at the service. They came from the hymnal, not from the 1928 version of the Book of Common Prayer, of the Episcopal Church, to which Mrs. Astor belonged. The article also misstated at one point part of the name of a New York City arts group Mrs. Astor supported. It is the Municipal Art Society, not Arts.

And a picture in some copies provided by Getty Images was published in error. It showed Reinaldo Herrera, the husband of the fashion designer Carolina Herrera — not Kenneth Jay Lane, the jewelry designer and a friend of Mrs. Astor’s.

Correction: September 18, 2007

An article on Aug. 15 about names on a seating list for the funeral of Brooke Astor, the Park Avenue socialite and philanthropist who died two days earlier, referred incorrectly in some copies to Douglas Dillon, whose widow, Suzzie, was on the list. Mr. Dillon was secretary of the Treasury in the Kennedy administration, not commerce secretary in the Reagan administration. A reader’s e-mail message pointing out the error was misdirected at The Times.

James Barron and C. J. Satterwhite contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Funeral A-List: New Version of Mrs. Astor’s 400. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe